Consider every sales opportunity a ticking time bomb. But, unlike the usual time bomb, this one doesn’t make a sound or trigger an alert. It merely withers and falls off the sales vine. A mistake sometimes made by enterprise salespeople is assuming that because the average sales cycle is long, all sales cycles are long. With this comes the […]
Knowledge is great but a liability when misused. This is sometimes the case during a sales call. Some years ago, a young man was hired to sell cars. He knew nothing about cars and worried about failing. He compensated by asking questions: How much do you typically drive in a year? Do you want a […]
Three mornings a week, I hop on a Spinner and pedal away for 30 to 45 minutes. It’s a great workout and an excellent start to the day. But I go nowhere. Being on a Spinner is like the sales prospect that never closes. A moving target in our forecast, stealthily slipping from one month […]
The origin of this expression goes back to the second world war. Given the critical nature of the D-Day invasion and the fact that many enemy spies had infiltrated England, the allies had to come up with a way of keeping the details secret. “Loose lips sink ships” was their way of reminding service personnel […]
Clarity is imperative in sales. An agenda, from our first meeting until the last, is an important way of sustaining clarity with our prospect and navigating our sales opportunity to closure. Some see an agenda as too formal or old-fashion. Others want to be cool and wait until the meeting to frame the agenda or […]
You can’t shoot the moose from the lodge. (Ne várd, hogy a sült galamb a szádba repüljön!) Connecting with a prospect over the phone or a video conference is a good start, but nothing is more effective than a face-to-face meeting. Onsite meetings can be costly, particularly when travel is involved. But, if prepared, the […]
ASSUMING is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the human race, and definitely the biggest on a sales call. It holds the #1 position not just because it stands on its own as a profound truth in life and business, but also because it touches on all other rules in our Enterprise Sales Top TEN […]